


Arc Weld

by Simplistic_Apricity



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Arc Reactor, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, I'm not a doctor so sue me, Kidnapping, Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Trauma, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark-centric, lots of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:34:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23540152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Simplistic_Apricity/pseuds/Simplistic_Apricity
Summary: Tony Stark knew he wasn’t really a bad guy. It was something that he thought to himself often to offset public opinion. Despite what the tabloids, the media, and the insistence of more than a few women he had slept with, he did have a soul. Somewhere—deep, deep down maybe—but a soul nonetheless. Sure, he drank too much and fooled around more than he should, but he wasn’t really bad, right?Afghanistan changed his mind.
Relationships: James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	Arc Weld

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic, so be gentle but also constructive criticism is welcome??  
> I wrote this exclusively because I was frustrated that nobody else had already. Please kudos/comment if you have a sec to let me know what you think. Enjoy!

Tony Stark knew he wasn’t really a bad guy. It was something that he thought to himself often to offset public opinion. Despite what the tabloids, the media, and more than a few women he had slept with insisted, he did have a soul. Somewhere—deep,  _ deep _ down maybe—but a soul nonetheless. Sure, he drank too much and fooled around more than he should, but he wasn’t really  _ bad _ , right? 

Afghanistan changed his mind.

It had started like any other weapons presentation really. Dramatic speech, flash the goods, a little banter…until he was hit with his own missile. For a moment or two, he thought (wishful thinking) that maybe it had nothing to do with him, that the attack on their convoy was somehow unrelated to his visit, but his name plastered on the side of the explosive that was going to kill him might as well have been a sign from the gods. The moment before it detonated he had a brief flash of conflicting emotions. It was somehow  _ thank god I wore a bulletproof vest _ immediately followed by  _ why the hell did I design these things to rip through Kevlar oh god who’s shooting at us that’s my tech who stole my tech—  _

After the explosion, he sat stunned for a moment. He didn’t try to move and allowed his ears ring and his eyes to sting from the white light of the sun flashing above him. He actually thought that maybe the missile was defective or had somehow missed at point blank range, or maybe it actually  _ wasn’t _ meant to punch through body armour because he didn’t feel anything. After all, he was wearing some exclusive Stark body armor. This wasn’t run-of-the-mill military crap; his vest could probably withstand a tank for Christ’s sake. It wasn’t until his lips started to feel cold and warmth began spreading under his shirt that he felt the net of stabbing pain throughout his chest. He ripped at his shirt, and got a quick look at the blood seeping through that same state-of-the-art body armor and into his suit. Strangely enough, as he felt himself begin to lose consciousness—either from blood loss or the potential concussion, he couldn’t say—that he felt a strange pride that he had made such a damn fine killing machine. 

He didn’t exactly remember what happened next. Events twisted and fell into the wrong order as he tried to place them together in his mind, but he found himself torn apart in a dark and dirty room with a single overhead light that illuminated his body. He didn’t know what they did to him...only that his chest was ripped apart and put back together and there was something that made it feel utterly wrong. At some point he was shoved in front of a camera and a bag was ripped off his head for what? A ransom request? He was conscious and put under enough times to lose track and the time passed in a strange and fuzzy fashion cut through with bouts of agony until he finally awoke, clear headed, in the darkness.

His mouth tasted awful and he had absolutely no sense of how long he’d been unconscious. He tried to continue breathing slowly though his nose in case someone was watching him—maybe they hadn’t seen him jerk awake and he could convince them he was still sleeping to buy himself a few more minutes—but something caught and tickled in his throat. He gave a weak cough and a sniffle, but couldn’t dislodge it. He numbly moved his arms and to his relief they weren’t bound. Fumbling over his face, he located the NG tube taped to his cheek that was probably giving him all the trouble. He needed it out. He couldn’t breathe, and something was pulling in his chest he wanted it out  _ now. _ In what might not have been the best idea, he ripped off the tape and started pulling out the tube, hand over hand. God, how long had he been out, anyway? With a groan of discomfort he couldn’t quite hold back, he finally freed himself from the constricting plastic and rubbed his nose before resting back on his...bed? He wasn’t sure if he couldn't count it as that. He couldn’t quite see or feel it properly, maybe more of a cot? He tried to flex the numbness out of his fingers and watched his breath mist in the darkness.  _ It’s fucking freezing in here.  _ The constriction of his chest didn’t let up.

_ The fucking shrapnel! _ Was he still dying? If not, then he must’ve had a fine ass surgeon, because people weren’t meant to survive his missiles. He rolled to his right and saw a cup.  _ Water, thank god, _ but his fumbling hands only knocked it over. There was something next to it and he rolled just a little further before the pain in his chest caught and  _ holy shit _ that felt wrong. The pulling constriction reached a crescendo and he reluctantly gave a tiny cry of pain.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a calm voice called from further across the room. He looked to see a thin and balding man shaving in a crooked mirror. Tony rolled back into bed and looked down (painfully), and found, to his horror, that his chest was fully bandaged and  _ holy fuck were those wires? _ His eyes slowly and methodically traced their path to the left side of the cot where they plugged into a grimy car battery. 

A car battery. 

He could only repeat the phrase in his head to try to make sense of it because he was tethered to a car battery and it was  _ plugged into his chest _ that was a car battery in his  _ chest _ — Somehow he found himself contemplating in the back of his mind which of his cars he should check the batteries in.  _ Something _ was peeking out of the center of his chest to make the bandages bulge. He gently ran his fingers over it and on his next breath he thought he felt his ribs grinding up against something unyielding. Fear froze his hands for just a second before he realized he needed to see it and he needed to see it  _ now.  _

_ Fuck infection, _ he thought to himself, feeling his own unwashed skin and seeing the state of the room. He pulled apart the gauze, unable to stop an involuntary cry of pain or two, and almost vomited when he saw the cold lump of metal forming the magnet that he swore he could feel touching his heart. 

The balding man’s name was Yinsin, and it was incredibly hard not to hate him at first. Tony knew, logically, that he had saved his life. He was, in fact, a damn fine surgeon. The electromagnet thing was kind of ingenious, actually. And apparently they had met before, not that Tony remembered much of that New Year’s party anyway. But he could feel the new crackling in his ribcage from his freshly sawed sternum, and he hated that he was always tethered to this  _ thing _ . Even as the hours turned into days and he was tortured into submission, he had to carry around a car battery because it was the only thing that could keep his heart beating. When he was waterboarded, his first thought wasn’t for his terrible lung capacity, it was that the fucking exposed wires were going to get wet. When he was paraded around to see his colossal failure of their hoarded weapons, his heart was pounding with the idea of tripping on the uneven ground and dropping the thing. He was always hugging it to his chest that already ached with every breath he took, and trying desperately not to let it slip from his constantly numb fingers. The weight just grew so heavy in his arms.

The battery itself was far worse than anything they could do to him. Tony worked best when he was untethered, both metaphorically and literally, so to be put on such a short leash ripped away any semblance of freedom he could have had to himself. In his home workshop, he was always rolling under cars or running back and forth between benches—rarely sitting for more than design changes. The battery stole that pleasure from him and left him at the mercy of Yinsen’s steady hands to work in his stead. He needed a way to move but still have enough power to keep his heart beating for the foreseeable future. He’d need something sustainable…

The idea of miniaturizing and marketing the arc reactor had been thrown around Stark Industries since the original was built, but it never had any practical value for anything in development, and hey, as much as he liked screwing around with technology for the hell of it, what would be the point? Clean energy had no place in warfare, and the price he’d have to charge after R&D would mean nobody but the military could afford it.  _ Weapons were what got him here, they were why he was being kept, and they wouldn’t be why he was getting out. _ The arc reactor wouldn’t be perfect, sure, but at least he could free himself of the damn weight.

As he and Yinsen began to work, he rigged up a sort of handle with some old rope so he could carry the battery more easily, but that still only gave him one hand to work with, so he stuck to the detailed soldering work that he needed to stay seated for anyway, and left Yinsen to work on the casting and heavy lifting in his stead. He ensured that Tony had the proper supplies, forced him to take antibiotics out of the meager supply they had been given so his surgical incisions didn’t kill him in the dank room, and took over when his hands shook too hard to work properly.

The idea of the suit came not long after that. The arc reactor had enough power to keep his heart beating, sure, but that was a waste on its own if he was just going to be killed anyway, so he might as well use it to supply his escape. He quickly realized his three objectives: withstand bullet fire, destroy all his weapons, and then get himself and Yinsen the hell out of dodge. So what he really needed was a flying tank, but that didn’t have the maneuverability to fit through the halls, or the ambiguity of parts to make it seem like he could be building a rocket. It only seemed natural to simply walk out instead, and oh did it work like a charm. If they had just realized what he were doing a minute or two later. 

The world became a sea of fire and bullets through two eye slits and Yinsen  _ why Yinsen _ was dead but Tony was on his way out. He knew the flight wasn’t going to last long, and he had to maximize his distraction to give himself a better chance of avoiding being found after he flew out, so the moment his weapons went up in flames he hoped for a fucking miracle and pressed the button meant to ignite the jets in his feet. 

The flight lasted all of eight seconds.  _ Maybe _ ten if he was being generous, but it was enough. He could hardly see through his mask but it was a terrifying blur of sand and blue sky at unbelievable speed before he peaked and began to plummet. What pieces of armor didn’t fly off him as he fell shattered when he hit the sand feet first, and found himself waist deep in the desert. He stayed frozen for a moment in the sudden stillness, adrenaline still pounding through his veins, then let out a little groan. Jesus, he could have landed that better. He hurt all over, but he was alive and he was out and  _ he was alive! _ The face plate was obscuring his vision and pressing on his face, so he slammed his arms into the sand and wiggled out of the remaining metal until he had a hand free and could pull it off.

It was staggeringly bright and hot on his bare skin. After weeks in the cave, he had forgotten what natural light felt like. Once the mask was off his face, he spent a few moments squinting in the sunlight before he could really see anything. His vision restored, he stared at the metal scattered far and wide, at the mountains in the distance, and at the beautifully clear sky. A few servos continued whining, doing their best to keep working under the circumstances, but their job was done. Tony allowed his head to fall back upon the sand and the ghost of a smile haunted his bloodied lips.

“Not bad,” he sighed. 

He allowed himself a couple seconds to revel in his newfound freedom before the wind kicked a puff of sand into his eyes and prompted him into action. He slowly managed to wiggle and claw his way further out of the sand, shedding as much of the suit as possible as he went. He and Yinsen did the best they could to pad the moving pieces so the roughly welded metal didn’t completely dismember or decapitate him, but he still found himself covered in in scrapes and burns where the hot metal had touched his skin. His shoulders were absolutely torn to shit. After what was probably at least fifteen minutes of struggling, he was out of the suit and facedown in the sand, exhausted, covered in motor oil, and free. Tiny grains lodged themselves in the abrasions all over his neck and into the arc reactor, but he couldn’t seem to care. He stayed there for a minute or so, gathering both strength and motivation. He needed to move. The explosion he left behind would be enough to attract the attention of the military, but he couldn’t stay where he was. His captors would easily be able to track his flight trajectory if they saw him take off, and he couldn’t afford that—even if he did just take out most of their transportation. He pulled off his welding jacket (also torn to shit) and wrapped it over his head to keep the sun out of his eyes and headed north.

He never thought walking would be so difficult, but trying to move through the Afghan desert took every bit of determination he could muster. Who knew heart surgery, torture, and being confined to a single room for weeks could take so much out of you? How long had he been there anyway? It had definitely warmed up since the weapon demonstration in February. Sure, he was in the middle of the fucking desert, but damn he was feeling the sun right about now. He switched holding the jacket around his head from his right to his left hand. He had definitely pulled something in his shoulder during that fall. It was still moving, so that was a good sign, but the perpetual swinging of his arm while he walked was definitely drawing his attention to it. The day passed...and continued passing as the morning crept into evening and he watched the sun slowly move from over head to his left. He was beginning to feel a chill seep into the evening air as he reached the top of a dune when he heard the rapidly approaching sound of helicopter blades from behind. A brief bolt of terror shot through him as he turned to look just as two US air force helicopters passed him and made to land.

“Hey!” he screamed as loudly as he could, abandoning his hold on the jacket to wave his good hand as high as possible. He started laughing and gave a cry of victory when the first helicopter finally hit the ground, its blades slowly spinning to a stop. He ran towards them, but after he found himself stumbling he finally gave up and fell to his knees, his arm still in the air as he tried to catch his breath. Soldiers were pouring out of the first helicopter now, and moving towards him. He folded in his fingers to make a peace sign, then let the arm fall to his side. God, he was just so fucking tired. The lead soldier seemed the most urgent, and was the only one without a gun out. Was that...Rhodey? Of course it was Rhodey. That son of a bitch was finally here. Jesus, he had been starting to think that he didn’t survive the initial attack on their convoy. He slowed only when he was within speaking range of Tony, and acted like he wasn’t incredibly relieved to see him alive.

“How was the fun-vee?” he asked. Tony had almost forgotten that little comment, but he smiled anyway. Rhodey clapped him on the shoulder, and he tried to pretend like it didn’t hurt him. “Next time you ride with me, okay?” Rhodey said, crouching down to his level. Tony couldn't even look him in the eye. He just stared and the sand and leaned in until he fell on Rhodey’s shoulder.  _ He was such a good friend _ , Tony thought, because he held him tight and pretended he didn’t notice him crying quietly into his fatigues.

It took a long time before Tony was able to stand. After a minute or two just resting against Rhodey’s shoulder, desperately trying to compose himself, he heard the voice of one of the soldiers that had come with him.

“Colonel Rhodes, sir,” he began. “We’re reaching our time limit.” He sounded young. Maybe he was the same age as the kid who asked to take a picture with him in the fun-vee before this whole shitshow went down. Jesus, he’d forgotten there were other people here for a minute. He couldn’t afford to let anyone see him like this; Pepper would have a fit. He felt something metal on Rhodey’s uniform click against the arc reactor and his breath froze.  _ Shit shit shit shit— _ they could see the arc reactor. He couldn’t afford for it to become public knowledge; he didn’t know who was leaking his weapons plans and he couldn’t afford to let anyone find out new designs, and he couldn’t let them know how he escaped. If the military knew he could make a combatant suit to take out a whole encampment with just one man with a  _ goddamn pile of scraps in a cave _ — Imagine what he could do with his own workshop. He couldn’t let this get out. Couldn’t build them anymore.

“Just give us a second, here,” Rhodey responded quietly. No, the kid was right; they really should get moving, and he had to find a way to conceal the arc reactor as much as he could for now. Tony pushed himself away from Rhodey and took a deep breath before slipping into the frame of mind he usually reserved for important business deals and press conferences Obadiah or Pepper made him go to. Sure, he ignored those most of the time, but every now and then he needed to know how to slap on a confident face and act like he cared. 

“Let’s move,” Tony told him, slapping a hand onto his shoulder and pushing himself up (with great difficulty) to stand. He clumsily pulled the jacket from his head and held it in his free right hand, clutched to his chest as if injured (which it was). Rhodey rose with him, looking at him with a mix of concern and  _ I know what you’re doing _ in his eyes. Nevertheless, he put a hand to Tony’s back to help steady him as he stood, swaying on the sand. It was fine, all he had to do was walk over a hundred feet or so and they’d fly him away and he could sleep and have some water and  _ bathe _ oh god he’d missed showers… “There’s some people that aren’t too happy with me right now, so I’d rather head out before they get the chance to have any more words with me,” he continued. He stumbled forward a step before Rhodey gestured to the young soldier and he came up on Tony’s other side to support him. Normally he’d protest, but right how he was just too damn tired. 

Between the two of them, they managed to get him into the helicopter. The rest of the men were bustling around, readying for takeoff, but Rhodey just stood by him as he buckled into his seat with fumbling fingers. 

“Tony, are you okay?” he continued latching the buckle. Why was the damn thing so difficult? “Let me—”

“I’ve got it,” Tony said a little too harshly. The buckle locked with a  _ click. _ One of the men called that they were ready. Rhodey made a quick motion and the blades kicked back up. He sat next to Tony who continued staring forward, elbows on his knees and his lips pressed to his folded hands. Rhodey seemed to be waiting for something, but Tony couldn’t—he didn’t—

“Not here,” he said in a low voice. “I can’t—” a little tremor found its way into the last syllable and he cleared his throat. “I can’t talk about it here.” A few more beats of silence passed before he looked back over to his friend. He kept a fine mask of stoicism, but he kept clenching and unclenching his jaw and there was something in his eyes… “What? You missed me that much?” Tony asked sarcastically. His voice didn’t carry quite the way it was supposed to, but it was close enough.

“We all thought you were dead,” Rhodey told him, deadpan. “You were gone for almost three months.” Wow, that was a little longer than expected. He wasn’t sure exactly how long it’d been but three  _ months— _ a quarter of a year...“So yeah, I missed you. Jackass,” he added as an afterthought. Tony gave a little smile and leaned back. 

“Missed you too,” he muttered, closing his eyes. The next thing he knew, he was being loaded onto a stretcher the shuttled off again—in a plane this time—to what Rhodey informed him after he woke up was a base in Germany. At some point he had been given an IV of fluids and antibiotics and patches on the worst of his cuts. Someone (ie, Rhodey,) had put a blanket over his torso that conveniently obscured the light and shape of the arc reactor from prying eyes. The space of the plane he was being held in was empty save him and his friend. His mind wasn’t moving at the pace it usually did, so it took him a couple minutes to realize the implication of being moved to a larger base, but he was going to be checked out by  _ doctors _ .

He tried to remain rational, but the more he thought about it, the less he liked it. They were going to ask him all sorts of questions about how sick he was and what he had done to rip off and burn so much skin and how they had tortured him and why there was a  _ damn glowy thing in his chest  _ and they would probably reach in and try to take it back out, his only source of defense, the  _ one good thing _ from this  _ oh god—  _

He had been secured to the gurney in a few straps over his torso and legs while he was unconscious but they were too tight; he couldn’t breathe. His ribs were crackling and there was a weight in his chest and he was carrying that damned battery all over again and it was just so heavy and they were putting him underwater and  _ he couldn’t breathe— _

“Hey, Tony, hey,” Rhodey was speaking somewhere far away and something was touching one of his arms but Tony was trying to loosen the strap around his chest because they were cutting him open and putting a magnet in his chest and he didn’t want it there. Everything was too bright and too dark and it hurt and he just needed to fucking breathe for two seconds and everything would be fine. Eventually the strap popped open, but he didn’t think it was something he did. He didn’t care. He sat up as fast as he could, and he could feel the blood rush from his face but he sat forward and held his arms with clenched fists over his chest so it would stay together. Someone had put an oxygen mask over his face. He gasped until he felt an arm on his right shoulder, the bad one. He flinched away automatically, from both pain and surprise, and hated himself afterwards when he saw the look of guilt and pity on Rhodey’s face. Man, he almost wished that he looked disappointed. He was way more used to seeing him looking at him that way, when he could defend his actions with some weak excuses and push him off until his next mistake. He didn’t have the energy to try to justify himself this time.

“Rhodey I’m scared,” he whispered. 

“I know,” Rhodey responded, voice low. 

“I almost died,” he confessed, his voice shaking. “They hit me with one of my missiles and I had—I  _ have _ a chest full of shrapnel,” he continued. Now that he was getting it out the words poured from his mouth without him being able to stop them. He needed Rhodey to understand to he could keep them from asking too many questions. “They couldn’t get it all out so they put an electromagnet in my chest to keep it from getting too far into my heart and it was powered by a car battery, a  _ fucking car battery, _ that I carried around for weeks until I made this.” He clutched his chest a little tighter. “It’s the only thing keeping me alive. It’s keeping the magnet in my chest powered but I can’t let anyone know about it because if they find out how to make one like this they could power anything they fucking wanted and I can’t—” He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes to try to keep back the traitorous tears threatening to spill out. “I can’t let that happen,” he told him, his voice shaking. “Not again.” 

“ _ We _ won’t let that happen,” Rhodey promised. “I swear. It won’t even go into any official documentation if you don’t want. It doesn’t matter that they work for the government, all the doctors will still have to keep all your information private.” Tony jostled in the gurney as they hit a spot of turbulence and someone announced that they were starting to descend. 

“Come on, we need to get you buckled back in,” Rhodey told him. “They’ll need to get you inside in a few minutes and both of us will get in trouble if they know I let you out.” He reluctantly laid back down and lowered his arms, revealing the arc reactor while he was strapped back down. Rhodey replaced the blanket over him. Tony caught one of his arms as he began to move away.

“Rhodey?”

“Yeah?” Tony closed his eyes.

“...I wanna go home.” Rhodey clasped his hand and clapped his other one over it.

“I know. I’m not leaving you. You’re riding with me, remember? I leave you alone for two fucking minutes and you get yourself kidnapped.” Tony sighed.

“I’m fucking tired.” He heard a little chuckle. 

“Go to bed, man,” Rhodey told him, giving his arm a pat. “I’ll wake you up if we need you.” 

Despite his new level of anxiety, Tony did manage to fall somewhere between sleep and waking. The plane finally landed and he was very distantly aware of bustling activity around him. With his eyes closed, he counted turns as he was pushed...somewhere inside.

_ Left through the door, five hundred feet and then a right, pass three halls then another right— _ He was with Rhodey and his eyes weren’t covered so he could leave whenever he wanted, but he still kept the directions in the back of his mind as he drifted off again…

He was jostled back to semi-consciousness as he was lifted from the gurney to a significantly more comfortable bed, but it wasn’t until he felt cold metal on his left side that he felt himself fully wake.

He jerked sharply away, and a hand fell firmly on his right shoulder to hold him in place. He had already thrown up his other arm to try to push it away before he realized it was Rhodey, sitting in a chair by the side of his bed. The cold on his other side wasn’t the freezing metal of a gun barrel or Yinsen’s scalpel, but a nurse in the process of cutting off his tattered undershirt with a pair of crash scissors. Rhodey gave his arm a little pat.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” Rhodey apologized. Damn, when was he going to go back to being his normal asshole self? “They have to get to your chest so they can see...everything,” he explained quietly as the nurse cut off the other sleeve and began pulling off the little bit of clothing hiding the arc reactor. Rhodey leaned in a little closer. “Everyone who’s going to be working on you already signed an NDA before you got here. Pepper has all the paperwork back in the States.” 

Tony’s heart gave a little twinge at that.  _ Pepper. _ Man, he didn’t realize how much he missed her. He wondered what she’d been doing since he’d been gone.  _ Three months. _ Well, at least she finally had a vacation. He was a full-time job for sure. He should really make sure she got a good present this year. She normally bought it for herself, anyway. The nurse had his shirt off and quickly moved to snipping off his pants as well.

“Wow, normally a take a lady to dinner first,” Tony quipped, turning from a sighing Rhodey to face her. She didn’t move from her work, but she gave a tiny huff of laughter.

“Somehow, I doubt that,” she told him, moving from the left to the right leg. She spoke with a slight German accent that tilted her vowels in an amusing way. “I’m afraid my husband might mind anyway.” Tony cracked a little grin at that. His heart wasn’t really in the flirting, but he enjoyed it all the same. It felt closer to normal than he’d been in a long time.

“Shame,” he sighed. 

“I’m sure it is,” she responded, giving him a little smile and taking his thoroughly destroyed clothing away. Luckily, he had been allowed to keep his underwear...at least for now. Like the rest of his clothes, they were pretty disgusting, but he enjoyed the tiny sense of modesty they allowed. Another nurse, a man this time, checked the site of his IV and a few of his preliminarily bandaged wounds, then pulled a clipboard from the base of his bed.

“Alright Mr. Stark,” he began, clicking his pen and looking at him with clinical professionalism. Ah, he was German too, but he seemed like he would be significantly less fun than his previous nurse. “I just have a few questions for you before we really get started.” He eyed Rhodey on Tony’s other side. “Are you comfortable with Colonel Rhodes remaining in the room?” Tony nodded and waved his hand in a gesture of “yeah, whatever.”

“Excellent. First, if you were to rate any pain you are feeling from one to ten, where would it fall?” Tony frowned and closed his eyes for a moment. One one hand, he was starting to suspect that he had at least partially dislocated his right shoulder and he was covered in cuts, burns, and bruises...but on the other hand he had recently been tortured and operated on with minimal anaesthesia so his pain scale was probably off now…

“Ugh, maybe a six?” He took a deep breath and felt his ribs pop in a way they weren’t supposed to. Yep, definitely had at least one of those cracked too. “Make that a seven,” he rectified with a wince. The nurse jotted something down on the clipboard and called something in German to a young woman that promptly scurried out of the room.

“And the source of this pain?” Tony rolled his eyes back and then closed them leaning back, and told him in short clipped tones.

“Right shoulder. A couple ribs.” He gestured to the rest of his body, covered in scrapes and burns from the suit. The nurse nodded.

“And your...?” he trailed off, gesturing to his chest. Tony immediately closed off.

“Not of importance.” The nurse looked surprised but didn’t pursue the issue. A woman with a tight ponytail came and took what felt like a gallon of blood from his right arm, then exited, all the while the male nurse kept asking Tony questions...did he have any allergies, any piercings—Tony only gestured to the arc reactor for the latter, before he was given a gown and shuttled off to get dozens of X-rays from every angle in the known universe and a couple separate CT scans, and an ultrasound of his heart—which caused the sonographer no small amount of grief, as she couldn’t get in at any of the normal angles she would have otherwise.

The radiologist informed him that he did, in fact, have a minor shoulder subluxation, one cracked and two bruised ribs, but no internal bleeding or permanent damage, with one exception.

“Your surgeon was not wrong, Mr. Stark,” she told him, scans in front of her as she pointed out different areas as she spoke. “You have several small pieces of shrapnel lodged in your atrial septum, but they do not currently appear to be causing any additional damage. As for your… implant,” she paused, not sure how to describe the arc reactor as she switched to one of the other x-rays, “It does not appear to be causing any immediate harm. However, I would strongly recommend that you speak to your own physician upon your return home to discuss your options going forward.” Tony interpreted that as a very polite “get it out of your body immediately.”

Then came the interviews with the FBI, CIA, NSA—all the acronyms basically—plus a few branches of the military. He gave an accurate account of what he remembered from the beginning: the ambush, his kidnapping and the pacemaker from hell, the arc reactor (which he chose to describe as “an energy efficient electromagnet), and the Jericho missile. But his escape was a little trickier. He still wasn’t going to let anyone in on this. What he told them instead is that he planted a bomb in his room to kill whoever entered next (true), lit a fire to destroy all the weapons they had (true), and fled on foot (not so true). He wasn’t sure if the entirety of the US government was that gullible, or they just didn’t really care how he got out since he destroyed the place behind him, because nobody batted an eye at the fact that he ended up in the middle of the desert without being followed. And that was that. 

They forwarded all his test results back to Malibu, he was given a sling and some  _ nice _ painkillers for his shoulder, he was allowed a shower, shave, and haircut, Rhodey brought him a new suit, and then he went home the next morning. He stayed in a wheelchair for most of the time. Although he was in no immediate danger, he was deemed severely malnourished and dehydrated, so he couldn’t really protest when he barely had the strength to stand alone. Luckily, Rhodey gave him a supportive arm as they rose to exit the plane. They both seemed to have developed a silent agreement to never talk about Tony’s panic or crying or feelings vomit. If it never came up again, Tony thought, it’d be too soon.

He squinted in the sunlight and swallowed the abrupt sense of terror it instilled in him. He tried to remind himself that this light meant freedom instead of punishment. Slowly, he managed to focus on Pepper. He knew she was happy to see him, even if she claimed it was just to get out of job hunting. The brightness in her eyes gave her away, even when she was absolutely appalled that he refused to go to the hospital. The arc reactor could wait. His injuries could wait. There were more important things he needed to get off his chest first, because he had finally realized what really made him a bad guy and he wanted to set some things straight.

Tony Stark knew he wasn’t a good person. He had so much blood on his hands that he was fucking swimming in it. There was no way to wash it off, but he’d be damned if he didn’t try to stop shedding any more.

“I’ve been in captivity for three months,” he explained, calmly over Pepper’s protests. “There are two things I  _ want _ to do. I want an American cheeseburger, and the other—”

“That’s enough of that,” Pepper interrupted, exasperatedly. 

“...Is not what you think,” he continued. “I want you to call for a press conference. Now.”

He was here to call a cease fire, but he knew in his heart that it wouldn’t stop here. This wouldn’t be a declaration of peace, and it wouldn’t stop for months, for  _ years—  _ but he was willing to fight for the first time in his fucking life. The war was just beginning.


End file.
